The British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Friday the Syrian government must be held accountable for what he called crimes against its citizens during the year-long revolt against President Bashar Assad.

"We need to start collecting the evidence now so that one day, no matter how long it takes, there will be a day of reckoning for this dreadful regime," Cameron told reporters as he arrived for the second day of a summit of EU leaders in Brussels.

"What I think matters is building the evidence and the picture so we hold this criminal regime to account and to make sure that it is held to account for its crimes that it is committing against its people."

Early on Friday, wounded French journalist Edith Bouvier arrived in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, after she was smuggled out of Homs.

Bouvier had been admitted into the French Hospital in Beirut, sources at the French embassy told dpa.

"She is resting. Doctors will decide if she will be able to travel later on Friday. A private French plane is waiting at Beirut airport to take her home," the sources added.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Bouvier and journalist William Daniels of France had been successfully smuggled into Lebanon.

Meanwhile, clashes erupted Friday between Syrian government troops and rebels in the province of Daraa near the border with Jordan, opposition activists said.

"Two soldiers from the regime troops have been killed in the clashes that are going on in Daraa," Haithem al-Omari, a Syrian activist based in the area, told dpa.

Daraa was the birthplace of pro-democracy protests that started against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011.

Elsewhere, Syrian government troops beefed up their presence inside the restive neighbourhood of Baba Amr in the province of Homs, which they seized Thursday after rebels made what they called a tactical retreat from the area, according to activists.

Syrian state television showed footage from Baba Amr on Friday and said the area had been "cleansed from terrorists."

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) told Reuters later on Friday that a Red Cross convoy carrying life-saving aid reached the Syrian city of Homs and was about to enter the shattered district of Baba Amro.

Earlier, the ICRC said that its convoy of 7 trucks loaded with food and other relief supplies was heading from the capital Damascus to Homs where volunteers and ambulances of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent were waiting to enter the district together.

The aim was to start delivering vital aid and evacuating the sick or wounded needing medical attention.